And Dale, maybe you’re right. If all it takes is for someone to put the word gay or god on a ballot and 80 million of you come running to the polling place, then maybe your party does have it figured out.

Just because the dems treat minority voters the same way doesn’t make it right. You’re equivocating, and making absurd assumptions to justify how the republicans use your religious group.

If the party is going to reform itself, then it should do so. In my eyes, reform does not mean - figure out a way to get a tiny bit above the 50% threshold. Reform means sitting down at the table and saying, ok we had nearly eight years of absolute and total power. We squandered it in a spectacular way and were systematically removed from power because of it. What the hell went wrong?

They’ll be down the road in a fully-tenured professor’s house.

Or reading the Constitution to tell you what government is given to do and keep it at that?

You can’t get there overnight, but a KISS platform and crafting policy from that would help… otherwise you are just a bunch of programs with a few semi-stated ideas and no real coherent idea of what it means to be a Republican. Then mandate the KISS platform to all candidates high and low? You know, have some idea of what a governing ethos actually *is*, instead of doing things spur of the moment? Structure follows simplicity, and that would mean strong State party structures which follow the more general outlines but can adjust by State. So you can have State level diversity and adhere to a common view of federal government.

That does mean going beyond the bland ‘conservative’ label and having to identify the few vital concerns of the Nation and get rid of the distractions and hand those back to the States. I would vote for federalism that had the old ’structural’ view and applied it across *all* of the federal government, not just the judiciary. I will not vote for a Big Government party or candidates any longer: they are the problem.

However, if you start the conversation, and I know I am responding to Chuck not to Rick or Pat, if you begin by extracting evangelicals, you are merely repeating the same mistakes made previously, although in a different way. The last two election cycles, the Republican party had a message of what we are not, rather than what we are. We are not Bush, we are not inexperienced, we are not mean, we are not going to take as much in taxes.

We must define it as what we are: we will keep you safe through forward looking military expenditures, we will keep the government out of your business, we will select judges who don’t make stuff up, we will protect the borders. In short, the new infrastructure is useful as a means to define the debate rather than being defensive against dems reframing our positions to mischaracterize them. The decision now is one of focus. What are the issues we wish to rally around? I agree that school prayer, creation vs. evolution, and abortion are silly topics to use as base issues. Abortion is virtually decided, and the other issues undercut religious (including irreligious) freedom.

Pandering to religious kooks like me is pointless. We should be treated as the Dems treat black voters: a loyal constituancy that can be taken for granted. But kicking us out is as stupid as the Dems intentionally insulting blacks. And the Christians may be the key to turning conservative blacks toward a more open-minded voting pattern. But as long as Obama is in office, they will be effectively out-of-play.

In other words, people willing to sacrifice the “fundamentals of conservative ideology” because of an intolerance of intellectual diversity. Like academics following the truth wherever it leads, as long as it stays on paved roads.

My main suggestion for how to disconnect from them is simple. Have a new Republican party that takes no official stand whatsoever on issues that have nothing to do with responsibly governing the country. Why does a party have to have a stance on every issue? Thus, the core beliefs of the party are preserved without all the baggage of the other stuff.

If it’s a hot button issue for the evangelicals, then drop it from the platform and take no stance. This might take a small portion of the evangelicals out of the equation, but I guarantee that you’d get a migration of people like me who share a great deal of the fundamentals of conservative ideology, but simply can’t stomach the other baggage.

We know you hate them and think they are a necessary evil, but I assure you, they’re not. If you build a better party based on actually conserving something… anything, people will just come. You won’t need scare them into voting like you do with the Evangelicals.

Heh - you dating Kathleen Parker?

You are talking about 15% of the party - if that. And perhaps you could give the GOP some ideas on how to “disconnect” from the evangelicals? Maybe line them up against a wall and shoot them? Reading my site you know what I bemoan is their influence. Decrease their influence to what it was prior to George Bush #41 caving in to them in 92 and I think people wouldn’t care as much that they were Republicans.

ed.